What did I learn from an X'mas e-card?
Hello there,
I received an X'mas greeting card from IAP by email. “IAP” is the abbreviation of “International Association of Prosecutors”. The IAP is the only worldwide organization of prosecutors. It was established in 1995. Their headquarters is in Hague, Netherlands. IAP hold Annual Conference every year in different city of the world. 2008 was in Singaorpore, and 2009 will be in Kiiv,Ukraine from 6 - 10 September 2009. Each member can visit different cities of the world each year by participating the Annual Conference..
Initially, I didn’t pay much attention to it because I thought it was done for X’mas occasion. However I got a second thought that it is the first time they emailed a Christmas e-card to all their members. I took a look at it again, and I found that they printed the greeting in 7 different languages which are below (They are also my greeting to you.):
……………With Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year (English)
………………Prettige Kerstdagen en Gelukkig Nieuw Jaar (Dutch)
..................Meilleurs Voeux pour la Nouvelle Année (French)
…………….. Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo (Spanish)
…………… Frohe Weihnacheten und ein Gutes Neues Jahr. (German)
... Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva i s Novim Godom (Russian)
……………….Kung his Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan. (Chinese)
I recognized 3 of 7 which are English (1st), German (5th), and Chinese (7th).The last one is not Chinese character but Chinese phonetics. The phonetics sounds strange, but I am ok with it. I also checked up which language it is, and put the answers in the brackets, please correct me if I am wrong. Thank you.
The world is dominated by the computer, and the computer is dominated by English. Therefore, the world is dominated by English. For example, I cannot show any Chinese character on the BBCLE student blog.
I would like to show you the X’mas greeting card with Chinese (phonetics). Well, ...the Chinese will somehow find a way someday.
Best wishes.
James Wu (Wu Zhih Cheng), Taiwan.
Comments
Hello James! Thanks for the posted X-mas greeting. I agree that it looks more on the western style almost as in everything and everywhere the Mc Donald western stereotype. What a pity. Chinese´s characters painted by ink are such a wonderful and old art which could give a contemplative feeling just to this time of the year! You do a good work teaching us lots of new things! Best wishes to you!
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